New member introduction: Steve Wray

[Vaidya Sundaram]

Namaskaram.
 I was catching up with the postings on the list and thought a small note
might be in order on this discussion:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Subrahmanian, Sundararaman V [IT]"
<sundararaman.v.subrahmanian at CITIGROUP.COM>
To: <ADVAITA-L at LISTS.ADVAITA-VEDANTA.ORG>
Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2002 11:40 AM
Subject: Re: New member introduction: Steve Wray

> 4.  Traditional view point dismisses any need for "validation" of the
> content of Vedas outside of Vedas i.e, that the contents of Vedas are
> self-validating and no external means can make an authoritative statement
> about the validity of the Vedas.  So scientific enquiry can add more means
> of explaining Vedanta but is not necessary for "validating" Vedanta.

It is not as it the traditional view point "dismisses" the need for
"validation", or that it is self validated always ... - such a view point
would indeed make it dogmatic. That is not the traditional view point as I
understand it. It is more a question of the realm of knowledge which the
vedas can teach us about. Where all fields of enquiry in our realm fail us,
i.e. where preception, reasoning, analysis etc fail, then we resort to the
vedas as a valid means of knowledge. It must also be noted that where our
perceptual realm as I will call it is indisputable, then the vedas must be
reinterpreted to accord to reason. For example, if the vedas were to give us
a statement like "fire is cold to the touch" or something like that, then we
must reinterpret the statement as having a more hidden meaning than obvious.
This is because the experience of the touch can and should be the realm of
experiential observation. However, if there was another statement like "
after death, the soul of the person migrates and gets another body" - here
we have to take the vedas literally since we have no means of knowing that
there is a process of transmigration for the soul in our perceptual realm.

bhava shankara desikame sharaNam
Vaidya.